A Simple Strategy For Spam Control

I’ve recently employed a very simple mechanism for spam control. So far, it’s been quite effective and required the installation of NO new software, tunable Baysian filters, or anything. So I thought I’d share it with you.

The premise is simple – you have two identities. One identity is public. You publish it on your web page. You use it to participate in online message boards. It’s the email address you type into webforms to register. It’s the email address that catches all of your spam. Your other identity is private. You only hand it out to people that you know. You don’t type it into any web form, ever. This way, you’re assured that all mail to the private identity is non-spam and high-priority. You check that mailbox often. You may wish to periodically check the public mailbox, which will be 95% spam and mailing lists and pick out the handful of personal messages, which you can reply to with your private identity, so their
reply in turn (and hopefully all future correspondance) will be sent to your private address.

It’s simple to set up – all you need are two email addresses. Most ISPs will let you have a few. And I’ve found it’s already begun to save me time. It doesn’t deny anyone the capacity to contact me and it doesn’t involve the use of annoying confirmation messages. It just quietly whitelists people with whom I’m already in touch without any software configuration.

Easy, no? 🙂

Props to Numair for tipping me off to the fact that industry execs are already using similar techniques.